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Human Activity Quotes

Browse 198 quotes about Human Activity.

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Human Activity Quotes

“Human dynamism cannot be manipulated or switched on like that of a machine. It cannot be engineered or programmed. Human beings are created, not constructed – that is why they love to create their own reality. Human action cannot be explained by the laws of thermodynamics or by that of molecular biology. The wellspring of human action comes from the human spirit. The dwelling space of this spirit is our being.”

Human NatureHumanity And SocietyHuman ActivityHuman ActionHuman Dynamics
Book:The Other 99%: You Can Dare To Lead
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“A nervous excitability, a chronic exaltation of the passion, in which commingle the inferior life of the individual and its exterior manifestations, a state in which sentiment, idea, and will are confounded together, where for the lack of the powerful corrective of logic, the flights of imagination know no bounds, where life and human activity are deprived of a regulator, and move outside of material and concrete factors, by the sole interior force of the soul.”

KnowsHumansIdeasSoulStatesTogetherMovingPassionIndividualForceImaginationPowerfulMaterialsActivityLogicBoundsJewFactorsFlightNervousManifestationSentimentsConcreteSoleInferiorsInteriorsDeprivedExteriorHuman ActivityExaltationRegulators
Author:Kadmi Cohen
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“Coral reefs are under assault. They are rapidly being degraded by human activities. They are over-fished, bombed and poisoned. They are smothered by sediment, and choked by algae growing on nutrient-rich sewage and fertilizer run-off. They are damaged by irresponsible tourism and are being severely stressed by the warming of the world's oceans. Each of these pressures is bad enough in itself, but together, the cocktail is proving lethal.”

WorldHumansEnoughRunningTogetherAnimalRichGrowingActivityProveCreaturesOceanPressureAssaultStressedIrresponsibleTourismCocktailsHuman ActivityReefsNutrientsFertilizerSewageAlgaeCoral Reefs
Author:Klaus Topfer
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“It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.”

MenHumansAbilityPerfectParticularActivitySkillsSurvivalSpeciesSatisfactionMeaningfulMeaning Of LifeAcquireYieldMasteryUtilityMeaningful LifeAcquisitionHuman ActivityLife Means
Book:Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
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“Every change in conditions will make necessary some change in the use of resources, in the direction and kind of human activities, in habits and practices. And each change in the actions of those affected in the first instance will require further adjustments that will gradually extend through the whole of society. Every change thus in a sense creates a "problemfor society, even though no single individual perceives it as such; it is gradually "solvedby the establishment of a new overall adjustment.”

FirstsHumansKindWholeUseActionIndividualPracticeSocietyConditionsHabitActivityResourcesInstancePerceiveAffectedEstablishmentAdjustmentHuman Activity
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“There is a case for saying that the creation of new aesthetic forms has been the most fundamentally productive of all forms of human activity. Whoever creates new artistic conventions has found methods of interchange between people about matters which were incommunicable before. The capacity to do this has been the basis of the whole of human history.”

PeopleHumansHas BeensMatterWholeFormFoundCasesCreationActivityCapacityBasesMethodArtisticProductiveConventionsAestheticOriginalityHuman HistoryHuman ActivityInterchange
Author:John Zachary Young
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“Business is a creative and therefore spiritual endeavor. Great entrepreneurs enter the field of business in the same way great artists enter the field of art. With their business creation, entrepreneurs express their spiritual desire for self-realization, evolutionary passion for self- fulfillment, and creative vision of a new world. The entrepreneur's business is their artwork. The creation of business is as creative as any creation in art. In fact, building a business may be the most creative human activity.”

WorldWayHumansMayArtSelfFactsSpiritualDesireArtistPassionVisionCreativeCreationFieldsBuildingActivityEntrepreneurSelf RealizationRealizationFulfillmentEndeavorNew WorldGreat ArtGreat ArtistArtworkHuman ActivitySelf FulfillmentCreative VisionBuilding A Business
Author:Yasuhiko Kimura
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“There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.”

PeopleHumansMayNightSongWifeBabyArmsActivityFindingsMeaningfulSignificanceDishesInsignificantWashingHuman ActivityAffirmingMeaningful Song
Author:Leonard Cohen
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“If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature - the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society - it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what's there.”

IfsHumansPersonsArtLastsArtistConsciousnessCenturyDangerousPositionActivityTasksSecularFrontiersUnprecedentedStatureHuman ActivityAutonomousSecular Society
Author:Susan Sontag
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“When you decide 'to be a writer,' you don't have the faintest idea of what the work is like. When you begin, you write spontaneously out of your limited experience of both the unwritten world and the written world. You're full of naïve exuberance. 'I am a writer!' Rather like the excitement of 'I have a lover!' But working at it nearly every day for fifty years – whether it is being the writer or being the lover – turns out to be an extremely taxing job and hardly the pleasantest of human activities.”

WorldWritingYearsHumansIdeasJobsTurnsWrittenLoversActivityExcitementFiftyHuman ActivityUnwrittenExuberance
Author:Philip Roth
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“Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is ... death! Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.The choice lies with you!”

HumansWarEndsStatesLyingChoicesIndividualPrinciplesStruggleGroupsFieldsRevolutionDevelopmentActivityDestructionStartingLocalsCrushAgreementTyrantsInitiativeNew LifePalacesLivelyHuman Activity
Author:Peter Kropotkin
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“Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. It differs, however, from most other branches of human activity in that not only are the pathways of scientific thought determined by the presuppositions of the scientists but their goals are the testing and revision of old presuppositions and the creation of new.”

HumansArtGoalSleepCreationActivityScientistDeterminedBranchesCommerceWarfareTestingPathwaysHuman ActivityRevision
Author:Gregory Bateson
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“No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysteriously inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities. Instead, we recognize the exalted kind of seeing that leads to the creation of great art as an outgrowth of the humbler and more common activity of the eyes in everyday life. Just as the prosaic search for information is "artistic" because it involves giving and finding shape and meaning, so the artist's conceiving is an instrument of life, a refined way of understanding who and where we are.”

WayGivingHumansKindDoeArtSelfEyeArtistUnderstandingCommonSeeingInformationCreationActivityShapesFindingsInstrumentsInspiredEverydayArtisticEveryday LifeGreat ArtRefinedExaltedHuman ActivitySelf ContainedConceiving
Book:Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
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“One of the most essential and mundane of human activities - taking care of children - requires high levels of anxious vigilance. ... [Parents] dare not risk assuming that the sudden quiet from the toddlers' room means they are studying with Baby Einstein. Visualize fratricidal stranglings and electric outlets stabbed with forks: this is how we have reproduced our genomes.”

HumansMeanChildrenCareParentLevelsRoomsStudyRiskBabyActivityQuietEssentialsAssumingDareAnxiousElectricOutletsMundaneForksHigh LevelHuman ActivityVigilanceToddlerGenomeStrangling
Author:Barbara Ehrenreich
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“In this age of space flight, when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible... remains in every way an up-to-date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the Moon also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral law of God.”

WayShouldHumansDoeBookUseHomeAgeChristianLawEvilSpaceMoralModernPlanetsOughtActivityMoonBibleToolsRemainsFlightBombsAddressesRegionsAtomsLaws Of NatureHuman ActivityGuidelinesMoral LawAtom BombUp To DateSpace Flight
Author:Wernher von Braun
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“The Gospel of the army is cunning, as of all other human activities. The wisdom of the snake under the meekness of the sheep is what wins out. The first Commandment is--never let them get anything on you-- The second: Graft--get privileges others haven't got--worm yourself into confidence The Third--seem neat and prosperous--as if you had money in the bank”

IfsFirstsHumansSeemsWinningAdviceHavensActivityThirdsArmyPrivilegeDeceitSheepCommandmentsSnakesWormsCunningProsperousNeatHuman ActivityMeekness
Book:Travel books and other writings, 1916-1941
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“Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still themost important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.”

HumansHeartStillsImportantTodayLawCommunityJusticeExistenceMovementActivityConcernRecognitionHuman ExistenceHuman Activity
Book:Crowds and power: Masse und Macht]
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“The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be "a hand, not a mouth"; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.”

HumansLooksIdeasSelfHandsGirlWorkBoysTaughtActivityMouthsTradeWorkersProfessionImpressedDependenceHuman ActivityDronesHives
Book:History of woman suffrage
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“With a generous endowment of motherhood provided by legislation, with all laws against voluntary motherhood and education in its methods repealed, with the feminist ideal of education accepted in home and school, and with all special barriers removed in every field of human activity, there is no reason why woman should not become almost a human thing. It will be time enough then to consider whether she has a soul.”

ShouldHumansSoulReasonEnoughHomeSchoolLawSpecialFieldsActivityIdealsMethodFeministMotherhoodAcceptedReason WhyGenerousBarriersNo ReasonWomens RightsLegislationHuman ActivityEndowment
Book:Crystal Eastman on women and revolution
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“Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt.”

HumansSufferingActivityGuiltSurrenderHardestEmancipationHuman Activity
Book:How to Raise Your Self-Esteem: The Proven Action-Oriented Approach to Greater Self-Respect and Self-Confidence
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“Peace and the survival of life on earth as we know it are threatened by human activities which lack a commitment to humanitarian values. Destruction of nature and nature's resources result from ignorance, greed and lack of respect for the earth's living things.”

KnowsHumansEarthValuesResultsIgnoranceActivitySurvivalCommitmentResourcesDestructionGreedHumanitarianThreatenedLiving ThingsHuman ActivityLack Of RespectDestruction Of Nature
Book:My Tibet
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“The effect of the post-Enlightenment project for human society is that all human activity is absorbed into labor. It becomes an unending cycle of production for the sake of consumption. The modern concept of "built-in obsolescence" makes this clear. The cycle of production and consumption has to be kept going, and the work of the artist or craftsman who aims to create something enduring becomes marginal to the economic order.”

HumansArtistOrderClearEconomicModernEffectsActivityProjectsEnlightenmentConceptsBuiltLaborAimEndureSakeProductionsPostsCyclesConsumptionConsumerismHuman SocietyOverconsumptionHuman ActivityUnendingCraftsmanObsolescenceEconomic Order
Author:Lesslie Newbigin
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“As the country continues to dissect the recent natural disaster, we might want to start considering what about the disaster wasn't actually 'natural' at all. ... Human activity, the burning of fossil fuels, is causing global warming. Global warming is causing the oceans to warm. Warm oceans are steroids for storms.”

WantHumansCountryMightNaturalActivityOceanClimate ChangeWarmStormDisasterBurningFuelGlobal WarmingConsideringFossilsFossil FuelHuman ActivityNatural DisasterSteroid
Author:Michael Moore
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“Mathematicians need proofs to keep them honest. All technical areas of human activity need reality checks. It is not enough to believe that something works, that it is a good way to proceed, or even that it is true. We need to know why it's true. Otherwise, we won't know anything at all.”

KnowsWayNeedsBelieveHumansEnoughRealityHonestActivityAreasMathematicsProofChecksMathematicianGood WayHuman Activity
Book:Letters to a Young Mathematician
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